The Singles Jukebox

Taking a dive into the world of VTubers…

[Video]
[5.77]

Iain Mew: Having spent the year writing more about video games than music, I’m vaguely familiar with VTubers from game streaming clips and little more. This contains so much of its own explanation, delivered electrifyingly, that it doesn’t matter. Rap is a perfect way of setting out a character, and so Calliope the demon makes her mission statement in layer on layer of carefully crafted artifice, expanded on in a thrilling rush of vocal tones and beats. She uses two languages to crank up the density of the wordplay even higher, on top of fitting it into every detail outside of the song — the video even starts off with an additional translation joke. Which is the sort of thing that could get too clever for its own good, but the song is far too much stupid fun for that.
[9]

Alex Clifton: According to the Virtual YouTuber Wiki, Calliope likes “slaying people, dark spaces, flowers, stuffed dolls, sweets, the color red, mafia movies, rap (especially Japanese rap; she claims that she met the genre in the Underworld because it was dead), red wine, and “Death Sensei” (the Grim Reaper) as she is a reaper in training.” I am pretty sure I was friends with this exact girl back in 2004. Had this song existed back then, a good 35% of my friend group would’ve been quoting this for months. I don’t fully get it, but the rap itself doesn’t make me want to claw off my ears (that’s more for the airhorns that come through as the bass drops). I’m worried I will have nightmares of this girl tonight even though I have the faintest memory of the melody after listening to it. I’m really having to think over whether or not I like this or not, and I’m mostly confused. Katie, I hope this is the response you were looking for.
[4]

Katie Gill: This is objectively ridiculous, and that’s why I love it. You cannot take a song with the lyrics “murder is so fucking kawaii” seriously at ALL. Like, this song saw the (definitely outdated) demographic of edgy mall goth spending far too much time reblogging #aesthetic quotes to their Tumblr before hitting up Hot Topic and went “what if I give them everything I want and THEN some.” I love a song that knows it’s goofy and indulges in the fact that it’s goofy, and you cannot have a concept that’s “shinigami idol girl who also streams video games” and NOT have inherent goofiness. “RIP” is 100% in on it’s own joke and is having a grand time indulging in it.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: How did I, the last living Shut Up Stella stan, not know before today that they collaborated with Hot Topic back in the day? That has to be what this is, right?
[5]

Ian Mathers: In my youth, at least when we were playing music that baffled our elders it was sonically extreme, not just conceptually extreme. Really I just mean this needs more Atari Teenage Riot* *(or more accurately, something I can’t imagine as much as my dad in the ’90s couldn’t have conceived of ATR).
[5]

John Seroff: As an old who has been haunting TSJ for over a decade, I’m not ashamed to admit this was my first exposure to both Hololive and VTubing in general, which — if my half-hour of Wikipedia and Youtube spelunking proved accurate — seems to be the reverse engineering of Poppy and Grimes into semi-anonymous corporate mascots. Or maybe vice-versa! I’m just a tourist, so I’m likely missing the point. What I do know is that this stevia-sweetened milkshake of diet ppcocaine, sanitized Yolandi Visser, and Disgaea NPC swagger annoyed me on first listen and didn’t improve after five more spins. Lyrically, my votes for key character lines were “murder is so kawaii” and “nice try stopping the motherfucking Da Vinci of human erasure,” neither of which would be out of place on a contemporary Eminem album. That’s not a compliment.
[3]

Dede Akolo: It’s an earworm but in that parasitic way. I can agree with the sprinkling notes of the Japanese language but the majority of English lyrics are not leaving me impressed. The wonky horns glissando throughout the verse brings it still in my ear but the chorus bass drop leaves much to be desired. 
[2]

Nortey Dowuona: Heavy, deadly drums slide in as Calliope dives and spins and twirls as the synths and bass and horns dip in and drop out for a burning synth buildup. A toss up of horn synths splash down with a hollow drum beat, soft percussion and sliding synth spurts. Then the next drop adds a zipping lizard synth, which is followed by chuckling percussion and willowy synths, followed by Calliope’s soft, slight sheen, which has a huge axe now that I look at it–
[6]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: The early schizoid personas of Nicki Minaj, the punk delivery of Rico Nasty, and the melodic edge of old Panic! at the Disco combine for a Japanese-English fireball of camp chaos. The first time I listened to this, I was so overwhelmed that I had to immediately sit down to process it all. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: As eye-popping as good manga, “Excuse My Rudeness….” plays like a bid for airplay across a variety of genre playlists. Calliope absorbs Kesha, Perfume, and who knows how many other artists. Unruly because what else can it be.
[6]

Harlan Talib Ockey: Soul Eater? In my Slim Shady? It’s more likely — and more replete with surprisingly sick bilingual rhymes — than you’d think.
[6]

Madi Ballista: I have not yet gotten on the VTuber idol wagon yet despite an enduring love for both J-pop and the virtual idols it often entails, but I think Mori Calliope has me sold with her debut track. It’s a pretty adventurous debut: bilingual raps are a tricky thing to accomplish effectively, but it strikes a solid balance, and more impressively, Mori Calliope authored the lyrics herself. But “Excuse My Rudeness” is not only fun and catchy, with a rhythm that starts out strong and keeps its momentum right up to the end, there’s also some cute wordplay. (“DIEsuki” is an entry-level pun; I was pretty tickled by “if you fuckin’ SEISO”.) She almost loses me at “murder is so fucking kawaii” (feels a little too ’00s weebcore) but otherwise, I find myself singing along to this song every time despite my extremely poor rap skills. Interestingly, she’s at her best when she’s switching between languages; she could stand to enunciate more clearly in some sections, but on the whole, the rhymes are snappy and her ability to switch between her “cute” and “dark” registers really sell the track as a character introduction. The backing track pops but lets Calliope’s rapping take center stage, and at three minutes it’s pretty much the ideal length for boppin’ along to this song on repeat.
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: Does an image song work if you’ve never seen the image? In this case it sort of does. Those who were there when Hololive EN was first announced will regard Calliope’s rise to the top of iTunes as a vicarious triumph; others who happen across this song by chance may instead see it as a curious piece of internet ephemera, perhaps airlifted from an abandoned Hot Topic. Calliope plays more to the former crowd, but remains intensely conscious of the latter, to the point where she brags about proving her haters right. More than a character intro, “RIP” is a recruitment tool, filled with enough high-concept theatrics to ward off the indifferent listener while luring in the more receptive. The song is a rapid-fire gauntlet of self-contradictions, as befitting the premise of a reaper apprentice who, prohibited from killing, turns to idol work instead. Complex Japanese rhymes and digressions into keigo exist alongside the kind of stock weeb phrases that you’d find in an episode of Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls. Calliope references the seiso ideal of a “clean, pure” idol in order to damn it, while alternating between sweet and hardcore vocals to play up the gap moe factor. At one point, she curses out her Hololive partner Takanashi Kiara, a blink-and-you-miss-it moment that nonetheless turned kusotori into an affectionate fan nickname. Not all will want to attach themselves to this faintly ridiculous world, but for those that do, “RIP” is critical in building the sense of communal intimacy that the VTuber realm is known for.
[6]